No time to eat, Silicon Valley drinks its meals!

Boom times in Silicon Valley call for hard work, and hard work -at least in technology land -means that coders, engineers and venture capitalists are turning to liquid meals.

Every night, Aaron Melocik, a software developer, follows a precise food routine. He blends together half a gallon of water, three and a half tablespoons of macadamia nut oil and a 16-ounce bag of powder called Schmoylent.Then he pours the beige beverage into jars and chills them before bringing the containers to work the next day at Metrodigi, an education technology start-up. At the office, Melocik stashes one Schmoylent jar in the refrigerator and takes the other to his desk.From 6.30am to 3.30pm, he sips from the first jar for breakfast, and the second for lunch. He consumes about 14 fluid ounces of Schmoylent each day so he can focus on coding instead of grabbing a bite to eat. "It just removes food completely from my morning equation up until about 7pm," said Melocik, 34, who has been following his techie diet since February .

Boom times in Silicon Valley call for hard work, and hard work -at least in technology land -means that coders, engineers and venture capitalists are turning to liquid meals with names like Schmoylent, Soylent, Schmilk and People Chow.The protein-packed products that come in powder form are inexpensive and quick and easy to make -just shake with water, or in the case of Schmilk, milk. While athletes and dieters have been drinking their dinner for years, Silicon Valley's workers are now increasingly chugging their meals, too, so they can more quickly get back to their computer work.

Demand for some of the powdered drinks, which typically mix nutrients like magnesium, zinc and vitamins, is so high that some engineers report being put on waiting lists of one to six months to receive their first orders. And the drinks are taking off across techie social circles. Venture capitalists have also poured money into the companies that offer the meal replacements, and investors including Alexis Ohanian, a founder of Reddit, count themselves as fans of the drinks.

"My dream would be if I could just pick up some at the airport, premade in the refrigerator section," said Ohanian, who invested in Soylent and treats the drink as a fallback meal. The entrepreneur says he will whip up a batch of Soylent and sip it the whole day when he is too lazy to make something to eat.

In March, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz served Soylent-inis and Soylent Whites at a cocktail event in Austin. Some members of the firm, which has invested in Soylent, have even gone on a Soylent cleanse, drinking only the liquid for several days, said Chris Dixon, an Andreessen Horowitz partner.

Other coders are customizing the meal replacements to social occasions. On a Saturday evening, Pulak "Potluck" Mittal, a 23-year-old software engineer, hosted a dinner party for half a dozen techie friends. On the menu were pad thai noodles and a side dish of Soylent.

Soylent's success has created opportunity for imitators, who are mixing and marketing their own powders. Alex C Snyder, known on internet forums as "Axcho," quit his job at the software company Linden Lab last August to sell his own variants of Soylent, like Schmoylent and Schmilk. Many of his repeat customers work in technology .

The time wasted by eating is, in Silicon Valley parlance, a "pain point" even for the highest echelon of techie. Elon Musk, Tesla's founder, once said, "If there was a way that I couldn't eat so I could work more, I would not eat. I wish there was a way to get nutrients without sitting down for a meal," according to a new book on the entrepreneur, written by Ashlee Vance.

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